Top Pot Hand-Forged Doughnuts - Mark Klebeck [10]
Thinning or Thickening
If your icing or glaze seems too thick, try stirring it—it should loosen as you continue stirring. If it still seems too thick, you can thin it with a tiny amount of water. Add only a teaspoon at a time, because a small amount of liquid goes a long way.
For icings or glazes that are too thin, add additional confectioners’/icing sugar, being sure to sift it first.
If your icing has thickened because it’s cooled (not because it was too thick in the first place), you can also rewarm it in a microwave-safe bowl for 15 seconds or so, to reliquefy it.
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Do the Twist
If you don’t feel that your doughnuts are being nicely coated in icing, try gently twisting them while they’re half submerged. If that doesn’t work, try rewarming or thinning as above.
TOPPINGS
Because icings and glazes dry quickly (even without agar), add toppings immediately after coating each doughnut. Do not wait until you’ve dipped all the doughnuts to start adding toppings.
THE TOP POT DOUGHNUTS YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE TASTED
The doughnuts in this book are our customers’ favorites, and some we’ve always wanted to sell or have sold in the past. Of course, there are many more combinations—and since being creative is an essential part of our process, it should be part of yours, too. Experiment with abandon; you can still call them homemade Top Pot doughnuts.
Make your own glaze or icing flavors by substituting other liquids for the water or milk in our recipes, or flavor doughnuts with anything very small that won’t affect the texture of the dough too much. Here are a few suggestions:
• Simple orange, apple, or cranberry glaze (made with juice instead of water) for yeast-raised doughnuts
• Ginger, cardamom, or cinnamon cake doughnuts, made with spice in the dough and icing
• Espresso doughnuts, made with instant espresso in the dough and coffee in the icing
• Double vanilla cake doughnuts, made by simmering all liquids first with a halved, scraped vanilla bean, then cooling
• Fruit-filled Bavarian cream bismarks, made by infusing cream with fruit flavorings and topping with fruit-flavored icings, instead of chocolate icing
Are there doughnuts that haven’t worked for us? Sure, but we take the good with the bad. There are also a few fun flavors we’ve loved but decided not to sell to the public. Here are some we (or our bakers) have made:
Car Bomb Bavarian: Like our Bavarian Cream Bismark, only topped with a Guinness chocolate icing and filled with a whiskey-spiked pastry cream.
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Cherry Blossom: Each spring, for a limited time, we make Cherry Blossom doughnuts, which are Michael’s favorite. They’re vanilla cake doughnuts, speckled with cherry chips and topped with a cherry-infused icing.
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Cristal Doughnut: Our classic raised ring, topped with a ginger ale-based glaze and finely ground Pop Rocks, for an effervescent experience.
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Peanut Butter and Jelly: Our classic vanilla cake doughnut studded with peanut butter chips that ooze when you bite into them, filled with berry jam and topped with a peanut butter icing.
SPICE CAKE DOUGHNUTS
The first doughnut Top Pot made, in 2002, was a basic spice cake doughnut, heady with nutmeg. We still love them plain, but you can also glaze or ice them, or try one of the time-tested combinations that follow. If you want to cover them in granulated or confectioners’/icing sugar, cinnamon sugar, cocoa, or plain sugar, see the instructions for sandy toppings.
Master Recipe:
BASIC SPICE CAKE DOUGHNUTS
MAKES ONE DOZEN doughnuts and holes
TOSS THESE IN SUGAR OR CINNAMON SUGAR WHEN THEY’RE STILL PIPING HOT, OR COOL THEM, then transfer them to a small paper bag filled with a few cups of powdered/icing sugar and coat them a few at a time. Glaze them when still warm, but make sure they’re cool before applying any icings.
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23/4 cups/315 g cake/
soft-wheat flour, plus more
for rolling and cutting
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp iodized salt
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2/3 cup/130 g sugar
2 tbsp shortening/vegetable lard, trans-fat-free